Larry Harvey

Larry Harvey (January 11, 1948 – April 28, 2018) was an American artist, philanthropist and activist. He was the main co-founder of the Burning Man event, along with his friend Jerry James. 2Burning Man Burning Man started in 1986 as a summer solstice evening ritual burning of their artistic creation of an effigy of a man with a group of just a dozen people at San Francisco's Baker Beach soon became an annual event that over four years grew to more than 800 people. In 1990, in collaboration with the SF Cacophony Society, the event moved to Labor Day weekend in the Black Rock Desert, where it has grown rapidly from a three-day, 80-person "zone trip" to an eight-day event with 70,000 participants. In 1997, six of the main organizers formed Black Rock City LLC to manage the event, with Harvey as the executive director, a position he held until his death. He was also the president of the Black Rock Arts Foundation, a non-profit art grant foundation for promoting interactive collaborative public art installations in communities outside of Black Rock City. 2Other activities He scripted and co-chaired/curated the arts department's annual event theme and was the main spokesperson and political strategist for the organization. He had been featured in such engagements as San Francisco's Grace Cathedral "Radical Ritual" with the Very Reverend Alan Jones, the Oxford Student Union, Cooper Union in New York City, Harvard's International Conference on Internet and Society as a panelist, the Walker Art Center in Minnesota and the San Francisco Commonwealth Club, as well as many others. 2Personal life Harvey grew up in the Parkrose area, just east of Portland, Oregon. Harvey graduated from Parkrose High School in 196